The present invention relates to sampling of television signals and particularly to a method and apparatus for providing a sampled television signal with enhanced apparent resolution.
Systems are known wherein an analog television signal from a TV camera or other program source is sampled at many points along each horizontal raster line and wherein each sample is converted to a digital value by an analog to digital converter. The output of the converter is sent through a transmission channel which may comprise a broadcast transmitter, coaxial cable, or the like. At the receiving end of the channel, the digital information is reconverted to analog form for reconstructing the original television signal for presentation.
The effective resolution of the reconstructed picture will depend upon the number of samples per TV line. Thus, the fewer the samples, the poorer the resolution will be. The sampling rate is frequently limited by constraints of the communications channel resulting in poorer resolution than would be desired for the system. That is, the digital bit rate resulting from a given sampling rate is limited by the bandwidth of the transmitting cable or the like.